title: Crisis management, capabilities and preparedness: the case of public hospitals in Iran.
abstract: Crises occurred in recent decades show that organizations' preparedness to predict and respond to undesired problems is directly related to the degree of their capabilities and preparedness to manage crises in this context, hospitals compared to other organizations are more viable to suffer damages if a crisis occurs. This study investigates the degree of public hospitals capabilities and preparedness to handled possible crises. Responses from hospital managers and directors show that most of them were not familiar with crisis management, while majority of them mentioned that they had crisis management plan and committee in their hospitals. Moreover, most of the respondents believed that if a crisis occurs in the hospital, patients, personnel and documents will be the first victims of the crisis. The study also indicates that having a crisis plan and crisis committee without being familiar with knowledge of crisis management, do not help managers to cope with crisis. Moreover, correlations show that older managers were more familiar with crisis management experiences abroad, and defined responsibilities contributed to setting up crisis committee, and taking crisis seriously.
authors.affiliation: PhD Public Administration Program, Faculty of Management and Economics, Science and Research Branch, Azad University, Tehran, Iran.
authors.forename: Reza
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Najafbagy
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D004189:Disaster Planning; D007722:Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice; D006740:Hospital Administrators; D006779:Hospitals, Public / Q000458:organization & administration*; D006801:Humans; D007492:Iran; D008875:Middle Aged; D019982:Organizational Case Studies